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Moscow says military crackdown ‘puts Ukraine on the brink of civil war’

A Ukrainian military crackdown on the country’s restive east triggered a grave new assessment from Russia Tuesday, with Moscow denouncing the move as a radical escalation that “puts Ukraine on the brink of civil war.”

Ukrainian Army troops muster on the outskirts of Izyum, in eastern Ukraine, on Tuesday. An Associated Press reporter saw at least 14 armored personnel carriers with Ukrainian flags, one helicopter and military trucks parked 40 km north of the city on Tuesday. (Sergei Grits / AP)

People sing the Ukrainian national anthem during a pro-Ukraine rally in the eastern Ukrainian city of Lugansk on Tuesday. (DIMITAR DILKOFF / AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

People stand at a barricade at the regional administration building that they had seized earlier in Donetsk, Ukraine on Tuesday. (Efrem Lukatsky / AP)

WASHINGTON—A Ukrainian military crackdown on the country’s restive east triggered a grave new assessment from Russia Tuesday, with Moscow denouncing the move as a radical escalation that “puts Ukraine on the brink of civil war.”

The ominous words came in a Kremlin statement attributed to Vladimir Putin as the Russian President balked at the day’s developments in a telephone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of crisis talks scheduled for Thursday in Geneva.

But beneath the high-level sabre-ratting, a high-risk operation unfolded on the ground as Ukrainian military units crept cautiously eastward toward a cluster of nearly 10 cities and towns in Ukraine’s industrial rust belt to reclaim territory lost to pro-Russian opponents.

Oleksandr Turchynov, acting president of the fragile government in Kyiv, told parliament that Ukrainian forces had recaptured the airport in the eastern town of Kramatorsk and launched a second operation in nearby Slovyansk “to protect citizens from terrorists who are trying to tear this country apart.”

An Associated Press team reported gunfire during the confrontation over Kramatorsk airport amid conflicting reports of casualties. Russia media said between four and 15 people were killed; other pro-Russian sources on the ground told AP of two injured and none dead.

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A cluster of online videos showed pro-Russian activists assembling barricades outside the airport in a bid to contain Ukrainian troops inside. One reporter on the scene, Ilya Azar, said the standoff later devolved into a drunken spectacle, with some inebriated protesters crawling forward as Ukrainian soldiers fired warning shots skyward.

“The drunks crawled over to the soldiers, who are shooting in the air. And then they talked without shooting,” journalist Azar tweeted. “The drunks could not explain coherently what they were talking about.”

But the day’s events came amid other sobering messages, including a declaration by former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko that Ukraine is already engaged in de facto war with Russia.

“We have to tell Ukrainians the truth: the Russian Federation is waging a real war against Ukraine in the east, in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in particular,” said Tymoshenko, who is bidding for a return to power in upcoming May 25 presidential elections.

Tymoshenko also called for the creation of an armed “national resistance movement” to augment Ukrainian security forces, saying, “there is a need to create special teams in every city.”

Russia has denied any role in the eastern uprisings, which are playing out with echoes of the carefully co-ordinated ouster of Ukrainian forces from Crimea in March.

Ukrainian officials on Tuesday claimed a direct link in the sequence of destabilization, identifying a Russian foreign intelligence agent, Igor Strelkov, as a leader of the pro-Russian provocateurs in Slovyansk. Ukraine’s security services say the same agent was also involved in the seizure of Ukrainian military facilities in Crimea.

Tuesday’s Ukrainian troop movements included a blockade of Slavyansk, a city in the control pro-Russian separatists since Saturday. A Ukrainian commander on the ground said the militants were reinforced by several hundred soldiers from the Russian army’s Main Intelligence Directorate.

“They must be warned that if they do not lay down their arms, they will be destroyed,” Gen. Vasyl Krutov told AFP.

But in steadfastly denying the accusations, Russian leaders insisted the reverse was true — and warned that Ukrainian military operations would effectively doom the Geneva talks involving Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the European Union.

“You can’t send in tanks and at the same time hold talks. The use of force would sabotage the opportunity offered by the four-party negotiations in Geneva,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

As many as 40,000 Russian troops remain clustered along eastern positions on the border, a presence that Ukrainians have warned could soon become an invasion.

In Washington, a month of diplomatic warnings about “costs” versus “de-escalation” and gradually deepening sanctions has shifted to harsher, less diplomatic messaging, as U.S. officials openly point to what they regard as “Russia’s false and dangerous narrative to justify its illegal actions in Ukraine.”

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, meanwhile, tabled a report Tuesday warning that the propaganda and incitement must urgently be countered in order to prevent escalation in Ukraine.

The UN report confirmed an element of Moscow’s argument about attacks against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. But it said that the attacks were “neither systematic nor widespread.” The report also noted allegations that “some participants in the protests and clashes in eastern Ukraine were not from the region, and that some had come from the Russian Federation.”

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